It has been a joy keeping the site up to date for as many consecutive weeks as I have, but alas, I have fallen to a point where I can’t keep the site current. As far as I can tell, the site was updated twice a week since October 15th. Today, May 6th, is the end of that sequence, undoubtedly a site record for consistent updates.

Now I have a full-time job, a one-day-a-week job, and a girlfriend. The site has fallen out of favor. But I’ve been thrilled about readership. We have more readers than last year, less than halfway into the year. Thank you in order to WordPress followers, Facebook followers, and the occasional search engine hit — most of all.

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Brawlers were a phenomenon in the early ’90s, but the genre has lived on to the present day, with Streets of Rage 4 in development even now. While Sega’s most popular arcade brawler was probably Altered Beast, their best effort in my eyes was the Streets of Rage trilogy. The series was a multiplayer urban brawler with items to pick up, special moves, and a slight cyberpunk look and feel. The series saw one arcade release, Streets of Rage 2, but in my mind, the series plays best on the Sega Genesis.

The first Streets of Rage is simple compared to the other two. The animation is rudimentary, but some basic elements are laid out. Adam, Axel, and Blaze are playable [Axel and Blaze would actually endure throughout the series], and you can play as two players. Things like telephone booths and barrels can reveal weapons and health pickups. In the first two Streets of Rage I relied on a cheat code to play out the end of the game, just so that I could see the credits. In other words, there’s a degree of difficulty to the game that belies the simpler aspects of it—hence my reliance on the cheat code at the end of the game.

The second game in the series is a big improvement. You will immediately notice the graphics are better, as are the animations. As you continue playing, you will also notice the music is better. Markedly better. The entire series has music from Yuzo Koshiro, and this is his best effort. The music genre is techno, and it surpasses technical limitations of the hardware to sound like music that would be on an album, not in a game. Now you can play as Max, Axel, Blaze and Skate, though in the third game Max gets the boot, and Skate continues on. The arcade version features voice samples, though not much is lost in the Sega Genesis version. Proximity can change an attack, for example turning a punch into a throw. As mentioned earlier, I made it to roughly the end of the game before I needed a cheat code. The nemesis is the same as in the original.

Which leaves Streets of Rage 3, which is probably better than the first game, but not as good as the second. We finally have a plot now, and it’s basically this: the world has been taken over by robots. As mentioned, Axel, Blaze, and Skate remain, and “Zan” now joins you. Sadly, Sega didn’t put much effort into Zan, because anytime you pick up an item – be it a pipe or a bottle – it all ends up as a bolt of lightning in his hand. Apparently, Sega couldn’t be bothered to program in specific weapon controls for Zan. You fight a robot version of Axel, and uncover other “robots in disguise.” Sadly, the game won’t run the credits until you win on the hard difficulty, and it’s a hard enough game on the first two difficulty levels.

So in summary, the first two games are great, but the last one is too inundated with plot. Interestingly, the fourth title is being published by DotEmu, which made a number of ports for Sega games, showing loyalty goes a long way. Ubiquitous as the brawler genre was in the arcade, we never got a title quite like those in the Streets of Rage series. It is on the Sega Genesis Classics collection in North America, which is available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch, in addition to the PC, all at a reduced price. Connect a second controller and play two-player. The more the merrier. Just don’t be surprised when you get that disappointing feeling at the end of 3.

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After the success of Super Mario 64, Sony Computer Entertainment likely saw 3D platformers as a growth area. Despite already publishing two major 3D platformers on the original PlayStation – Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon – with the introduction of PlayStation 2, they had a blank slate. Sony went on to publish three 3D platformers in this console generation: Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank, and Sly Cooper. The original Jak and Daxter was well-received, though the sequels were troubled, Jak II in particular for attempting to be more edgy and less fun. The Ratchet and Clank series went on to have a cult following, though I can’t say I’ve played it. Finally, the Sly Cooper series I feel is the most overlooked. In The Thievious Raccoonous, I have a distinct memory of riding a vine to go deep into a rain forest, and of an urban boss fight where the boss was always inaccessible. The game featured cel-shaded graphics, which were still trendy then, though not every object in the game has cel-shading. Though there isn’t much variety in gameplay, Sly Cooper and the Thievious Raccoonus has a Rayman 2 quality to it, though looking back on it now, it is rather simple.

I make the Rayman 2 analogy for a reason: you are basically collecting two things in the game. You collect coins, 100 of which grants you a lucky horseshoe, and a second 100 of which gets you a gold horseshoe. These let you endure one or two hits respectively. You also collect “clue bottles,” which are just messages in a bottle. Each level has a set number. Collecting them all enables your hacker friend Bentley (the turtle) to crack a safe code. Opening a safe reveals a page from Sly’s multi-generational family book: The Thievious Raccoonus. Most of the time this means learning a new move. Sly leaves a raccoon card in the safe, exactly the way “the Joker” in Batman leaves a Joker playing card. There is a third item, a key, which simply opens the door at the end of a level.

Every now and again there’s a mini-game. For example, there’s a driving mini-game with Murray the hippo, who is your driver. There’s also a chicken chasing mini-game. Aside from these moments, you are Sly throughout the game, but the frequency of mini-games ramps up near the end. A Splinter Cell influence feels clear, but the first Sly Cooper was released a month prior to Sam Fischer’s epic. You can hide from light in shadows, side-step along a narrow passage and sneak up on foes prior to attack. Failing to do so can result in an alarm sounding, but you can often destroy and silence the alarm by swinging your cane at the unit.

Some part of me wishes I never looked back at the game, because my memories were so fond. It seemed so underappreciated, and those memories I do have are still part of the game, though a lot of what’s in the middle is boring. The game was re-released in full HD as “The Sly Collection” for PS3, which also include the first two sequels. Sure enough, the original Sly looks great in HD, and cel-shading has a way of making a game look good years later (obligatory mention: Jet Set Radio is practically my all-time favorite game). With regard to enemy designs, the game has a little bit of a Rare Software feel to it. The music is fine, but I wouldn’t buy the soundtrack.

Which just about brings to an end my review. The sequels sound fun, and there are three of them, but I’ve never been all that loyal to Sony, which is the best excuse I have for not playing them. Fascinatingly, developer Sucker Punch Production’s first title was Rocket: Robot on Wheels for Nintendo 64, which I remember slipping by my radar. Humorously, the same thing nearly happened with Sly Cooper, but I think I saw it on sale at E.B. Games, and said “Why not?” Ratchet & Clank is the real cult classic, but Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus is some sort of double cult classic. Call it childish, but I’d take Sly over Infamous (Sucker Punch’s more realistic series) any day.

4/5

Editor’s Note

May 3rd, 2019 (today) we surpassed last year’s total number of visitors. Thank you everyone!

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I had never finished a Call of Duty game until last night. Having played Battlefield: Bad Company 1 & 2, I’ll tell you EA’s games have a clear graphical edge over the Call of Duty series, even after Call of Duty 4. Still, there’s a lot to like here, including a much longer campaign than EA’s offerings. Somehow, after the success of CoD 4, ActiVision decided to let studios Infinity Ward (the original Call of Duty team) and Treyarch switch on and off making titles in the series. So Infinity Ward published a game one year, and Treyarch published a game the next, giving each team a two–year development cycle, clearly a good idea to improve the quality of the games. This early effort from Treyarch is exactly that: high-quality, if you can look beyond the graphics.

This is an interesting title. The series made a name for itself – particularly with Call of Duty 2 – as a World War II series, but Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare changed all that. The title moved the “theatre of war” to the Middle East, turning it into an instant commercial success. World at War was released after this title, and the series returns to its World War II roots, but this time, from Treyarch, not Infinity Ward. Most of your time you are fighting alongside the Russians, or fighting as an American in Japan. At times it feels like enemies are constantly respawning until you hit a checkpoint. There was one instance where I had to run around a large fighting area to find the one remaining Japanese soldier preventing me from moving forward. All that said, the combat is fine, and it’s a lot of “boom head-shot” moments, but aiming for the body works pretty well too.

Weapons are plentiful but the only one I remember picking up frequently was an MK40. That said, there is a “driving a tank” level, a “fighting from an airplane” level, and a flamethrower level, breaking the monotony. Truthfully, the biggest threat in traditional combat is a grenade, which you can “throw back” if it’s close enough to you. Enemies are a little dumb after all, which I heard gets better in later titles. Checkpointing is generous, until the last two levels, deliberately spaced out to increase difficulty level. Of course, they could have made a really difficult combat sequence with the same checkpointing for the end of the game, but I suppose it’s fine.

The game runs beautifully with my AMD Radeon RX 570, and there literally wasn’t a single hiccup, not a single crash. That’s saying a lot. Max settings are fine, as it’s a last-gen game. I think what’s most surprising is it seems like the entire Call of Duty series is on Steam. Many publishers have left Steam, including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and Epic Games. When ActiVision acquired Blizzard, they got a huge asset—Battle.net—which is a storefront for Blizzard games. They could have very easily made it a storefront for ActiVision games as well, reaping higher profits, but they’re still on Steam. It baffles me.

So, despite having a soft spot for the Battlefield: Bad Company games, and even though I really don’t like first-person shooters because I think they’re too violent, I found myself enjoying Call of Duty: World at War. It is a much longer campaign. The story explains the significance of capturing enemy bases, and there is a lot of archival World War II footage. There is a place in the game menu for “Mods,” though I’d really like to see modernized graphics most of all. It appears the entire series is on Steam, but my advice is wait for a sale price.

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At the turn of the century, from the 20th to the 21st, we saw a massive output of driving games in the video game industry. Companies that had never before offered racing games began to develop them. Criterion Games, for example, which was founded in 1996, really hit their stride with Burnout in 2001.Bizarre Creations, which started in 1988 as Raising Hell Software, released their best title, Metropolis Street Racer, in 2000, after switching to the Bizarre moniker in 1994. Finally, Codemasters released the first Colin McRae Rally game in 1998, and the company is still considered one of the top racing game makers in existence today. Below we will discuss games from this time, and subjects of note, such as use of real and fake cars, graphical differences, and the beginning of home console racing wheels, pedals, and stick shifts.Gran Turismo 2 for PlayStation

Though the original Gran Turismo came before it, and its development took five years to complete, I feel the real origin of the driving simulator was Gran Turismo 2. Released on the PlayStation, it had a lot of new ideas. You had a “garage,” which you never actually saw, but it could hold as many cars as you could collect in the game. According to Wikipedia, there were almost 650 vehicles in the game, and amazingly, much of the auto industry was on board. You could buy a Dodge, a Chevy, or even a Lamborghini; many brands were represented. Most interesting, though, is that none of the cars could take damage. I assume someone with an auto-maker spoke up about not wanting to see a vehicle of theirs damaged, and the rest of the industry followed suit. Flash forward to the present. In Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012), I witnessed for the first time in my life, a licensed vehicle take damage in a game, thirteen years after Gran Turismo 2.

In addition to the garage, you obtained “credits” – a fictional currency – to get new cars or to upgrade cars you already own. Changing tires or turbo charging an engine was a blast, mainly because you could test the vehicle after modifying it. These ideas would live on in Microsoft’s Forza series, pronounced “Fort-za,” the Italian word for “power.” You could also win a race, which introduced a new course. It was ahead of its time, essentially allowing the player to live the life of a professional race car driver. In Gran Turismo, you could have your own steering wheel, a replica of an actual car steering wheel, and pedals (and sometime later a stick shift) to play the game. The most advertised feature was “force feedback” in the early days, simulating road bumps and rough terrain with a rumble effect on the wheel.

Ridge Racer 64 for Nintendo 64

Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec was a graphical improvement over the predecessor, but had PlayStation 2’s famous “jaggies,” non-smooth lines which can now be corrected with anti-aliasing. Most of all, it doubled-down on the existing formula, and I lost interest. On the other hand, 2000 A.D. was home to three important driving games, the first being Ridge Racer 64, released in February. Of course, the series started on PlayStation, and is probably just as good there, but Ridge Racer 64, I owned. In an earlier review I mentioned that it blurs the line between an arcade game and a simulation, but it’s much more of a simulation. The difference here is fictional cars and fictional tracks. It was never arcade-y in the “hit the boost up ahead” sense. It was largely a joy ride, never too difficult. Nintendo Software Technology (NST), a U.S. based studio for Nintendo, developed the title, and NST still exists today. These games never had you buying new cars or upgrades. Cars were earned with race wins, the end.

Sega GT for Dreamcast

Later in 2000, North America received a real rival to the Gran Turismo series, Sega GT. This was truly a treat. It was Sega acknowledging racing sims as a real genre. There were 130 licensed cars, and upgrades to boot. The menu was clunky, but it was pretty darn good. A beautiful thing about the Dreamcast is that it had a VGA adapter, which allowed a gamer to play on a computer monitor, with a higher screen resolution. In part, this enabled a new internal modchip for the Dreamcast, DCHDMI, which lets Dreamcast play games at 1080p, and features firmware updates capable of upgrading picture quality. Sega GT would be beautiful here.

Metropolis Street Racer for Dreamcast

Finally, in November 2000 in Europe, and January 2001 in North America, we got Metropolis Street Racer for Dreamcast. It was a “crown jewel” for racing games, as much as it’s a true success story for Bizarre Creations. Bizarre Creations was founded in 1988, but didn’t make a racing game until 1997. In MSR, there are courses in a beautifully detailed San Francisco, London, and Tokyo. The game had daytime and nighttime races. It had licensed cars, but upgrades weren’t involved. Perhaps best of all was the fictional radio station. A friend recently pointed out the female vocalist TJ Davis is also in a Sega Saturn Sonic the Hedgehog game. This makes sense because MSR was a Dreamcast exclusive, not to mention Sega published it. It really is the little details in the race tracks that make the game great. If you stopped your car in Fisherman’s Wharf, for example, you would see clothing shops and restaurants. Bizarre would live on with the Project Gotham Racing games on Xbox, but MSR is the peak. Sadly, ActiVision acquired the studio and shut it down.

I have said nothing about Codemasters or Criterion Games, which existed since 1986 and 1993 respectively, and are still in business. Perhaps strangely, Bizzare Creations, Codemasters, and Criterion are all British companies. England certainly loves cars, for those who have seen the Top Gear television series, and makes a few nice ones, like Range Rover, Jaguar, and Aston Martin. Codemasters started making Colin McRae: Dirt, a rally racing game, and are still making rally games today with Dirt Rally 2.0 (rest in peace Colin McRae). Criterion dared to be a bit edgy, making the Burnout series, which encouraged you to crash your own car or someone else’s as thoroughly as possible. Now owned by video game giant Electronic Arts, they haven’t made a racing game since 2013.

The realistic racing simulator lives on, most notably as the series Forza, owned by Microsoft and designed to compete with Gran Turismo. Unfortunately, they’ve practically ended Gran Turismo’s existence, and yet, every new Forza Motorsport game feels like factory farming, and doesn’t have the appeal of those early GT games. There are other games however, like iRacing, also keeping the simulator alive. Racing wheels are available in 2019, not to mention the ability to buy a bucket seat, which also gives you a slot to mount the wheel, the pedals, and the gear shift. There really was an amazing time for car racers, and I hope a new generation can look past less detailed graphics.

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It’s hard to measure digital distribution platform Steam’s impact on the game industry, especially because they don’t disclose sales numbers, and as a company that isn’t publicly traded, no one can force their hand. And yet, there was a time when every new game was $49.99 to $59.99, and a “Greatest Hits” version might sell for $39.99. With digital distribution and competition from big players in the industry, a top game can go on sale for $5—basically half the cost of a movie ticket—not long after its release. Someone will argue a game gives at least ten hours of entertainment and a movie gives you two. But in my mind, it’s the same idea. You play it, you enjoy it to the ending, you move on.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012) features the most deplorable thing in this industry: micro-transactions. I have long warned people that micro-transactions can run up a bill that is anything but “micro,” and if you’re buying a game, buy it outright and full, not “freemium” or in other words “free now and pay later.” A NeoGAF message board user informed me that Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012) was free years ago on Electronic Arts’ digital storefront, Origin, and I claimed my copy. Playing it now, years later, I have learned that Electronic Arts wants me to pay thirty dollars for all the content of this game, or spend five dollars here and there on the content I really want. The “freemium” business model caught up with me.

So again, it’s a thirty dollar price tag. But to be a member of Origin (Electronic Arts’ competition to Steam) with “Premium” access, means you can play from a library of over one hundred games, with all of the content of the included games, for one hundred dollars a year. Clearly this is preferable to paying for Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012). A subscription model to entertainment, not unlike Netflix. Assuming I’d play more than three games start to finish, all games would be less than $30 which is what EA wants me to pay as a non-member. But even that logic is flawed. The way I go about deciding on a new game is some sort of math equation. Like “the last game was enjoyable because I was driving. Now I’d like to play an RPG.” There would be too many games I’m not in the mood for. Perhaps game shopping has gotten more complicated. Perhaps EA is the only company that’s complicating matters.

I did play the game Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012) start to finish, with the exception of downloadable content. It’s actually a pretty good driving game. It was developed by U.K. developer Criterion Games, who made their mark in the game biz with the Burnout series, where you crash cars for the thrill of it. Many would say Burnout Paradise was their peak game in terms of quality – Burnout Paradise Remastered is part of EA’s subscription program. Though I spent only a couple of hours with Burnout Paradise, I understood the idea. It’s a massive map filled with challenges for fictional cars. Some challenges ask that you crash your car as severely as possible. Some challenges ask that you win a race.

What sets Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012) apart is we now have licensed cars. You can get a Maserati, a Ford, a Dodge, a Chevy, a Porsche, a Lamborghini, and more. And true to Criterion’s signature style, you can crash cars and watch the replay. For those interested in history, this is significant. As far back as I’m aware, the game Gran Turismo had many makes of real licensed cars, but there was a catch. No car company wanted to see damage to their vehicles. You could drive straight into a wall, and the car would simply stop. It was a very powerful move from a very powerful auto industry. Most Wanted (2012) upended this tradition.

Yes, you do get the replay, but no car crash is an objective in the game, with the exception of the “Most Wanted” cars. To earn a Most Wanted car, you have to beat that car in a race, and after the race, run the car off the road by bumping into it. After that, you’re free to drive it. There are ten Most Wanted cars, including your own. That said, there are cars everywhere in the game, with the logo of the car’s maker floating above the car. It’s usually parked in a visible area off of the main road.

When you own a car, you can enter it into races, of which there are eight. I really have to give Criterion credit: the races are hard. Races are ranked Easy, Medium, and Hard, and even the easy races are still hard. This is polar opposite to a series like Forza Motorsport, where every race is stupidly easy. If you place first or second in a race, you get one to two upgrades for the car. You have to suspend disbelief. The police might set spike strips to slow you down, and a common upgrade is tires that automatically re-inflate after going flat.

The police are a big part of this game. Often, one of your challenges is to evade the police. If you ever drive so fast and maneuver so deftly that you aren’t in the police’s line of sight, you enter a cool-down period, until they just give up looking for you. I’m not one to run from police, and always felt a little uncomfortable in these moments. It’s worth saying Criterion put a lot of work into cinematic scenes before the start of a race, like playing with the color of a city and its skyline, or watching your opponents levitate before racing. It can be silly, but it’s touches like this that give the game a little personality.

Again, if you beat the other nine cars on the Most Wanted list, you win the game. The credits roll, and it’s a lot of credits. The soundtrack, which has ample space in the credit roll, was largely forgettable. Of course, the game never really ends. You can keep finding new cars, racing them, and upgrading them until there are no more upgrades. The real problem, is the game gets formulaic. That is the exact process: get a car, upgrade it in every possible way, and get a new car. There’s a multiplayer aspect where you can challenge your friends, but my friends don’t have this game. Also, there’s that thirty dollars’ worth of downloadable content (DLC), but after seventeen hours of a simple formula, I know all I need to know about this one.

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Editor’s Note: It’s been a long time since having a Brief Game Review. Sometimes a slow day is nice.

This is a simple puzzle game from my childhood. Instead of being a “match three,” it’s a “match two.” Enemy characters from the Mario series will fall from the top of the screen in sets of two, toward the bottom. There are only four stacks and four types of enemies, but if you match two enemies, they disappear. Mario is at the bottom of the screen, with a hand under two stacks next to each other. You can flip the stacks with Mario’s hands, allowing you to match enemies.

Finally, there are Yoshi’s eggs, which come with a top and a bottom. If you place an egg bottom toward the bottom of a stack, and enemies accrue above it, an egg top will eat through the enemies to complete the egg. The eggs give more points. If you match two egg bottoms directly, they disappear, and the same goes for the tops.

It isn’t the most brilliant puzzle game, but it sure feels more fun than Dr. Mario, for example. Of note ~ “Game Freak” is the developer, and they would later go on to make the Pokemon series, which they still make to this day. Also of note is the game’s age. I was a mere lad of five when the game arrived in the United States. It’s cute and fun.

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My sister didn’t play many video games when we were kids, but she got hooked on two. One was The Sims, a game about living a fictitious life of someone else, and also decorating and budgeting for improvements to that person’s house. The other game she got hooked to is Tetrisphere, which isn’t like The Sims at all. Tetrisphere was going to be released on the Atari Jaguar, but the failure of the Jaguar led to the developers H2O Entertainment to port the game to the Nintendo 64. The game uses the same block shapes used in Tetris, but a sphere will only ever have two of those shapes at a time. It is a fun time sink, and there is some strategy, because there is a small speed-run community out there.

The game is a sphere of two shapes from Tetris, and you are trying to clear those blocks and reach the core of the sphere. You clear blocks by using the shape given to you (as your cursor, resembling a shadow) to clear one of the two shapes. Some, but not all, adjacent shapes will get cleared as well, helping you reach the core faster,. You can pick up blocks and move them to a better location to get a better combo. Just beware, missing the exact selection of a shape costs you a heart. There are three hearts, and losing all of them ends the level.

Quiet unexpected is the music. It’s pretty darn good. It has an electronic/techno sound to it, and it will stick with you after a long play session. The graphics are serviceable. You don’t need especially great graphics to display the puzzle. It’s nice to think there could be an Ultra HD remake to Tetrisphere or a sequel, but I see a couple of problems. One is that Nintendo might have some part of the rights after the Jaguar version fell through. They probably have no desire to sell Tetrisphere right now, because it’s not a bestseller for them like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Dragolia Lost. Also, H2O Entertainment, as far as I can tell, does not exist anymore. The last game they made was in 2001. There’s a new H2O Entertainment, but it doesn’t look like the same people.

The game has over 300 levels. There’s a gimmick in that the game gives you a weapon to destroy part of the sphere. You get one for scoring points, and if you wait, you’ll get an upgrade. There are six weapons in all, ending in the “Ray Gun,” which can shoot right to the core. There are a number of modes, and I think “Rescue” is the most fun, where you’re reaching the core to help a robot trapped in the center get out. The second best mode is “Puzzle,” where you’re limited to a number of moves, and must clear the sphere. The “Time Trial” is what it sounds like, and you can play a “Vs.” mode against the computer or a friend.

Puzzle games aren’t what they used to be. A game like Tetrisphere could sit next to any Nintendo 64 game at the time on the store shelf, like GoldenEye 007, and both would be “full-price.” Now it seems puzzle games are very happy in the Windows 10 Store, and the puzzle titles I don’t like (particularly on the Android operating system) charge “micro-transactions,” which can add up to a huge amount of money. This is from when a puzzle game really had to live up to sitting on the same shelf as the competition. Four stars for originality, and one star removed because it is novel but not perfect.

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It’s a strange thing, but when I think of games that are popular in the San Francisco Bay Area, I think of Street Fighter and Tetris Attack. The games both require twitch-like reflexes to gain an advantage and defeat your opponent. Lest we forget, the “Twitch” streaming service – which streams popular video games and tournaments – got its start in San Francisco. Much to my surprise, Tetris Attack is still going strong, despite being released in 1995. At PAX West (a gaming convention) 2017 in Washington State, there was a Tetris Attack tournament. Long before Bejeweled and Candy Crush dominated the “match three” genre, there was Tetris Attack for the Super Nintendo, a match three or four or five or six, with competitive game-play in mind.

Despite the claim in the game’s credits that “Tetris Attack was inspired by [the] original Tetris,” the two games don’t have a lot in common, aside from the theme of deleting blocks. The original Tetris was more to do with shapes, specifically the six shapes you can make with four square blocks. In Tetris Attack, colored blocks rise from the bottom of the screen, a feature that can be expedited with the “R” button despite blocks being a threat. The blocks are as follows: green circles, blue triangles, purple diamonds, red hearts, yellow stars, and occasional stone exclamation marks. You delete blocks by matching three or more of a kind, such as a row or column of three red hearts. You can get a “combo,” which is three or more of the same block cleared. You can also have a “chain reaction,” for example, when you clear a row of four that in turn clears a column of three.

If you’re playing two-player, the blocks aren’t truly deleted. The game does well as a competitive game, and the second player can be computer-controlled, or a real person. When you clear your own blocks, the opponent receives “garbage blocks,” a horizontal bar block of varying heights, bringing the opponent’s blocks closer to the top of their screen. If the opponent passes a certain threshold with blocks going over the top of their screen, the opponent loses. Garbage blocks can be converted into regular blocks by having three or more in a row or column merely touching the garbage block. The blocks systematically become the colored blocks that aren’t garbage, but beware. A talented opponent can give up one line of garbage, and have the remaining garbage stay garbage by clearing blocks on his or her screen. This is where raising your own block level with the “R” button comes in handy: you will spot more combinations.

The unfortunate truth is that if you have anything bigger than a twelve-row garbage block, the game stops counting. It was likely a space limitation on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System to allow only a twelve-row garbage block, as much as your opponent needs “love and mercy” (as Brian Wilson would say). I played the game years ago with friends, but it was interesting to see a competitive match between pro-level players at PAX West 2017. It becomes a sort of waiting game, where you both have lots of garbage, and are waiting for the opportunity to undo the garbage with a color combination. It is the moments between these moments that the competitive game is truly played. The game even has slow-down, because hey, this is the Super Nintendo.

There are other modes, including a Puzzle Mode with blocks arranged a set way and a limited number of moves to make. You must clear all blocks. There is Endless Mode, where you are trying to play for as long as possible. A Timed Mode asks you to get the best score in two minutes. Stage Clear Mode has you delete blocks below a set line. Story Mode is competitive, you versus the computer, and based a little off of the characters in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island. The game has been remade a number of times, most notably as Pokémon Puzzle League. I believe PPL does away with the twelve-row garbage block limit, but I might be wrong. Have fun with Tetris Attack if you can get your hands on it. It is not in any Nintendo eShop, so eBay is the place to go.

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I must warn you about this one. I was super tired, it was late at night, and I accidentally call Streets of Rage, Street Fighter a couple times. I was also way too reliant on the Game Genie cheat. Such is life.

Not sure what to do next week. I started a Mega Man play-through but haven’t finished yet.